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Wednesday, 22 December 2010

Making an impression

The painting above is of Alex and is not for sale. It has obvious references to A bar at the Folies-Bergère paintied by Manet during 1881/1882. The figures are reversed and naturally my wife is better looking. I enjoy the work of the impressionists by and large, particularly Manet. On the whole my least favourite is probably Monet. His lilly pond paintings do nothing for me truthfully. There again my work probably wouldn't appeal to him so that's probably honours even.

I probably like Manet because he was fairly unique in that he bridged the two styles of Impressionism and Realism. In many ways my work flits between the two. I also have in the past undertaken an homage to Dejeuner sur L'Herbe by Manet and also Olympia.

Today Alex fought her way into and around Tesco's for 4 hours doing the Christmas shopping. Quite ironic really as we don't know who is going to get here. One daughter, husband and grandchild have been trying to get a flight home from Las Vegas for the last 5 days. One son in law's parents are coming from Ireland.

Well if no-one gets here then I will certainly be well fed and watered. I spent the morning searching for props for my still life series. I went around the Antique shop next to Carmarthen Castle. It is quite easy to while away an hour there in any case. (Yes while away the hours is grammatically correct "while" in this case is a transitive verb apparently).

I found several items but none were perfect. If I am to spend two or three days on a painting it has to be right. The nearest was a Coalport Vase but the shape was a bit stubby, pity because it was in perfect condition and only £18.